BPD wife now thinks 5 year old son has anxiety problems (projection)

[Household1]

So, my wife, who has BPD, now thinks that my son has an anxiety disorder.  My son is a happy kid.  He can be a little shy, but otherwise I think he's perfectly normal.  My wife though, often says (right in front of him) "Oh he's got really bad anxiety issues just like you!" (she projects and accuses others of mental illness).  When my son is being just a normal kid doing normal things, it sets off my wife's anxiety and she yells at him and is now convinced he's mentally ill.

She's arranged for our son to get evaluated by a therapist.  My biggest concern though, is that she's going to spin a bunch of lies or half-truths to try and convince the therapist that our son needs to go on medication or something.  I am really bothered by this and I'm not sure what to do.  Suggestions?  Anyone else face this?

[soundofmusicgirl]

household1, is your son seeing a therapist? Can you address it with a therapist? My stepsons indeed have anxiety which is learned behaviour from their BPD mother who sees the world as a dangerous place and instills that view in them.

If your son is not seeing a therapist now, maybe this could be something that BPDxw will agree to as she has "diagnosed" him. Seeing a therapist can help your son learn coping skills that he will not learn from a BPD parent. It could be a great prevention and a helpful tool with all the things that he will face when being parented by someone with BPD. 

[takingandsending]

Hello Household1 and Welcome to bpdfamily.

Therapy is not a bad thing, even at 5 years old, especially if the child is living with a parent with a PD. But, the trick is finding a good play-based child therapist that has experience with kids in an environment with a PD parent. My S11 has been seeing a therapist for 2 years. There's nothing wrong with him, but my xw was convinced that he had anger management and opposition behavioral issues. I knew he just needed a neutral, unconditional source of support to validate and normalize his feelings.

In a household where one parent has BPD, kids really struggle to get their feelings validate and gain that sense that what they feel is normal. You can give that to your son, but likely you are often having to negotiate your wife when you do. You mention that she yells at him when he is doing or behaving in normal 5 year old manner. My xw does that as well. When that happens, what do you typically do? I know from experience that it's a very tough spot to be in as the healthy attachment parent.

Do you think it would be possible for you to find a couple of good child therapists and provide the list to your wife? Allow her to choose (she gets the control need filled). But perhaps you can give them the backstory prior to the first visit, maybe even during the initial calls you made to find someone suitable? I was lucky. My son's T came recommended from my T who discretely told me about my wife's BPD when we were in marriage counseling with her. My T filled in my son's T, who pretty quickly understood the dynamics. If the child T is worth her salt, she will be able to see the lay of the land just in waiting room interactions.

Hope this helps.

[livednlearned]

If the therapist does not insist on talking to both parents, that should raise a red flag. If you can, be sure to talk to the therapist on your own so you can share your thoughts. You can be diplomatic

How does your wife respond to validation? It might be important to validate that she is concerned about your son (no need to validate whether he truly suffers from anxiety).

It's also possible that she is extremely hypersensitive and attuned (this is true of the BPD people I know), and can sense your son's growing anxiety about being alone with his mom. My son learned at an early age to become who he needed to be in order to appease his BPD dad. He was a happy kid, but he began to realize that he had to take care of his dad's feelings, which reversed the natural parent-child role, in which the adult is supposed to provide emotional reassurance for the child. That can be very anxiety-inducing for a child, who lacks the skills to take care of a parent's emotional needs, yet tries to do so nonetheless.

Let's hope the therapist is good, and insists on doing a round of tests that are objective and not based on second-hand testimony from one parent. My son's psychoeducational testing was extensive. It involved 6 hours of testing with S15 (9 at the time), two separate hour-long in-person visits with the therapist (we were divorcing at the time), plus a long-form multiple-choice objective survey that both parents filled out. Then 4 teachers did the same test. We received results with a diagnosis based on all that. Insurance paid for 75 percent -- it was expensive, but thorough and one of the most important benchmarks to track S15's issues.

The female teachers and I saw the same issues. A male teacher saw some of the same stuff, but to a lesser degree. He also saw a lack of leadership traits in S15, which may reflect what different genders see as important. With BPDx, it was like he was describing a different child altogether.

Lesson 5 on the Coparenting board has really good material about raising an emotionally resilient child when one parent has BPD. Since you are the non-BPD parent, it will fall to you to become the emotional leader, not only with your wife but with your child. I can't say enough about how helpful these resources were, especially the stuff about validation. Hopefully whatever therapist gets involved will not rush directly to medication and will instead focus on unpacking whatever issues might be going on, and help S5 develop skills to manage anxiety. Whether he has a disorder or not, the skills will help him so much as the child of a BPD mother.